Let me know when the Dems become part of the general liberal community. Quite a few of us on the left think you're closet non-religious Republicans. Keep bombing brown people, that's quite "liberal".

Another No True Scotsman. I don't care what the fringe left thinks of what we refer to as liberal America. We know we don't fall into the same category as liberals from other countries. American liberalism is far more moderate. But it's where the support is. Over time, we'll move it to the left. For now, we'll take domestic progress where we can get it, and moderation in foreign policy (agree with it or not, that's what the Obama administration has represented; you won't get anything like it if Romney is elected).

Democrats may not fit into your personal mold of what is and isn't a "liberal", but we're most certainly miles to the left of what the modern Republican party wants to turn the country into.

And, quite frankly, we're your best allies in the fight to move the country further along to the left. You literally can't do it without us.

That's not good enough, if we can't do it WITH you. I have rather painful memories of Bill Clinton, a President considerably to the right of Richard Nixon in policy creation and execution even if he used a lot of "liberal" rhetoric. The Democrats have been cashing too many checks on the "It's either us or the Republican line" while moving to the Right during the Clinton era of Triangulation.

From reading this thread there appears to be a considerable amount of dissatisfaction with the US electoral system. Looking at it from the outside the college system appears to be confusing and a little wonky.

How difficult is it for you to change the system, do you need a referendum to make constitutional changes. Is there any movement to make changes or reform/modernise your model.

If there is a movement why isn't gaining any traction considering the deep levels of dissatisfaction with the way things are now.

From reading this thread there appears to be a considerable amount of dissatisfaction with the US electoral system. Looking at it from the outside the college system appears to be confusing and a little wonky.

How difficult is it for you to change the system, do you need a referendum to make constitutional changes. Is there any movement to make changes or reform/modernise your model.

If there is a movement why isn't gaining any traction considering the deep levels of dissatisfaction with the way things are now.

The moneybags that seem to run things behind the curtain read: lobbyists/special interest groups, media conglomerates, ad nauseam currently seem uninterested in making that particular mountain move.

Well the recent storm shows why the Electoral College has some benefits. If we had gone straight by the popular vote, then it looks like Romney would have won. Some can legitimately argue that the storm put a dampen on voting in strongly Democratic states. Thus if the storm hadn't happened, Obama probably would win the popular vote. Thus the Electoral College has helped to ensure the appropriate outcome.

There are a couple of states (Nebraska and Maine) have more proportional rules. Ultimately it is up to each state to decide how to allocate their electoral college votes.

There are pros and cons to the system, and whether something pro or con might depend on one's perspective. Smaller states having a larger say, if you are from a smaller population state this may be better for you.

From reading this thread there appears to be a considerable amount of dissatisfaction with the US electoral system. Looking at it from the outside the college system appears to be confusing and a little wonky.

How difficult is it for you to change the system, do you need a referendum to make constitutional changes. Is there any movement to make changes or reform/modernise your model.

If there is a movement why isn't gaining any traction considering the deep levels of dissatisfaction with the way things are now.

Because the practical hurdles to making the Constitutional changes needed are close to insurmountable. The normal procedure would be to pass the Amendment in Congress and then have it ratified by 3/4 of the states. The other approach, which has never actually been done, would be to call a Constitutional Convention. That's opening a whole can of worms and it's not entirely certain what the procedure would be.

There is an easier way. The trick is that while the Constitution specifies how many votes each state gets (Or the formula anyway) the states themselves determine how to award them. Most states give all their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in the state. 2 split their electoral votes. But nothing says that's how they have to do it.
There is a movement to have states allocate their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. 8 States have already passed laws saying that if enough other states join to determine the victor, they will do so. Those states represent 132 votes out of the 270 needed to win.

From reading this thread there appears to be a considerable amount of dissatisfaction with the US electoral system. Looking at it from the outside the college system appears to be confusing and a little wonky.

How difficult is it for you to change the system, do you need a referendum to make constitutional changes. Is there any movement to make changes or reform/modernise your model.

If there is a movement why isn't gaining any traction considering the deep levels of dissatisfaction with the way things are now.

The moneybags that seem to run things behind the curtain read: lobbyists/special interest groups, media conglomerates, ad nauseam currently seem uninterested in making that particular mountain move.

The electoral college has long been considered obsolete as I recall.

Unless you're one of the low-population states, in which case you're pretty content with the Electoral College giving you great deal more influence over the Presidential election than you otherwise would.

Well the recent storm shows why the Electoral College has some benefits. If we had gone straight by the popular vote, then it looks like Romney would have won. Some can legitimately argue that the storm put a dampen on voting in strongly Democratic states. Thus if the storm hadn't happened, Obama probably would win the popular vote. Thus the Electoral College has helped to ensure the appropriate outcome.

I wouldn't count on that. Obama's not behind by much and there's a lot of California left to be counted. It'll be closer in the popular vote, but I think he'll win that too.

Biggest reason I showed up to vote. I think this makes us the first state to defeat such an amendment, though there is still a law on the books defining marriage as one man and woman, but it'd be harder to change if the amendment passed.

More seriously the Republican party is in serious trouble for Demographic reasons, unless they can change course and I'm not convinced they're going to be able to convince their primary voters to do that.

Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C.) wrote:

We’re not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.

Tatters is an overstatement. They have a problem though, mathematically, winning in 2020 is going to be difficult unless they start changing their stance on immigration soon. A campaign run as efficiently as the Obama campaign is going to give them fits. Saw one thing that kind of astounded me, Obama had an add on Big Ten sports networks running 5 weeks prior to Romney.

So, they aren't in tatters, but they need to figure out how to make their angry white guys more tolerant of women and minorities.

Also, small devices implanted in the throats of republican candidates that prevents them from talking about rape.

So, they aren't in tatters, but they need to figure out how to make their angry white guys more tolerant of women and minorities.

That's the problem. Angry, white, privileged male isn't very a tolerant beast. He doesn't like anyone messing up his privilege.

So I actually prefer it when the party crazies start talking about rape. It helps people remember the beast's true colors.

Edit to expound a little more: Even now, Steve Schmidt is excoriating GOP leaders for extremist statements from the fringe. But that just masks the problem of actually catering to that fringe. They need to cut out the fringe, pursue compromise rather than obstruction, otherwise why trust them to govern in everybody's interests rather than angry, white, privileged male's interests?

Obama has snaked his way into another win, now we face darkened cursed skies for 1,000 miserable years.

Yeah, I've already started welding steel plates onto my Saturn and adding spikes to my over-sized leather shoulder pads. Once I finish making the crossbow and chain mail bikini for my girlfriend I think this is all going to be a lot of fun.

Just emailed the President with a suggestion for ending poverty and homelessness in the USA - It will involve the government building windfarms so that the energy produced can be sold to the Private sector - and the whole populace can be allocated one share of the farm each and the energy produced will need to be on a scale that will provide each citizen with a shareholder income of 30,000 dollars. That will raise everyone out of poverty, and be in the strategic interest of the USA.

Now all he has to do is do it.

The more the USA produces, the better off the populace and the less tax will be needed from all...Growth and income without taxation.

But hey, people call me cynical even when I give a realistic remark about something.

Well, it's not the president could actually read his own email. Of course he has people to filter it for him. I mean literally he probably gets more email and mail than he could get through if he did nothing else.

At best yellowdingo's email would get sent to the relevant agency, where it would promptly be dumped as crackpot.

I mean, seriously enough profit from windfarms to pay out $30K to each citizen? Back of the envelope calculation: US population ~300million *30K = $9 trillion
I haven't found hard numbers, but that seems to be much higher than the current total revenue of the whole energy sector, much less it's profits. So that's ignoring the cost of building and maintaining those windfarms.
It's nonsense.

From reading this thread there appears to be a considerable amount of dissatisfaction with the US electoral system. Looking at it from the outside the college system appears to be confusing and a little wonky.

How difficult is it for you to change the system, do you need a referendum to make constitutional changes. Is there any movement to make changes or reform/modernise your model.

If there is a movement why isn't gaining any traction considering the deep levels of dissatisfaction with the way things are now.

The moneybags that seem to run things behind the curtain read: lobbyists/special interest groups, media conglomerates, ad nauseam currently seem uninterested in making that particular mountain move.

The electoral college has long been considered obsolete as I recall.

The electoral college is the tip of the iceberg of major problems with the US electoral process.

The real dealbreaker is that there is no Federal standard for actually conducting elections, not even the Presidential ones. The actual voting experience can vary tremendously from area to area. In Jersey City, NJ me and my spouse took a short walk to the local PS 6 and did our voting, a process that took no longer than 30 mins from the time we left our apartment till we returned. JC is a fairly sizable town of about 500,000 and no area is more than a couple of blocks from a polling place.

In contrast in the battleground states like Florida and Ohio, the average wait online was up to 5 hours at a time using voting machines that are comparatively primitive and in varying states of operational readiness, with far fewer polling places per capita. A process which seems to have been deliberately designed to discourage voter turnout. Compared to these issues, the electoral college while important is a minor problem in scope.

The electoral college is the tip of the iceberg of major problems with the US electoral process.

The real dealbreaker is that there is no Federal standard for actually conducting elections, not even the Presidential ones. The actual voting experience can vary tremendously from area to area. In Jersey City, NJ me and my spouse took a short walk to the local PS 6 and did our voting, a process that took no longer than 30 mins from the time we left our apartment till we returned. JC is a fairly sizable town of about 500,000 and no area is more than a couple of blocks from a polling place.

In contrast in the battleground states like Florida and Ohio, the average wait online was up to 5 hours at a time using voting machines that are comparatively primitive and in varying states of operational readiness, with far fewer polling places per capita. A process which seems to have been deliberately designed to discourage voter turnout. Compared to these issues, the electoral college while important is a minor problem in scope.

Yes. And it's not all just random either. There are definite patterns of under preparing in districts likely to go for the other party. Or holding less early voting hours in some districts than others, again linked to where your supporters are likely to be. All legal or at least very hard to stop, though lawsuits forced some last minute changes in this cycle.

And then there's gerrymandering. Not relevant to the presidential race, but it's why House seats so rarely change hands.